Yen Lee
California
Overview
Founder. Partner for growth-stage founders. Board director. I’ve co-founded four companies, built $300M+ revenue businesses, and helped generate $1B+ in exits. Now I mostly work with founders who are scaling, invest in Canada’s best growth-stage companies, and serve on boards. I work with founders when their model is proven and the challenge shifts to scaling it efficiently while expanding into new areas. That usually means accelerating growth through new products and channels — or M&A and partnerships; improving how the team makes decisions and executes; and diagnosing and addressing leaders
About
Founder. Partner for growth-stage founders. Board director. I’ve co-founded four companies, built $300M+ revenue businesses, and helped generate $1B+ in exits. Now I mostly work with founders who are scaling, invest in Canada’s best growth-stage companies, and serve on boards. I work with founders when their model is proven and the challenge shifts to scaling it efficiently while expanding into new areas. That usually means accelerating growth through new products and channels — or M&A and partnerships; improving how the team makes decisions and executes; and diagnosing and addressing leadership gaps. Together, we customize proven playbooks. A recurring theme: the best growth is customer-led — retaining existing customers, deepening their engagement, and using their insights to drive new products. I’ve been working with data, AI, and machine learning since 2003 — as an operator and board director — at Yahoo, Uptake, Ebates/Rakuten, JLL, and McElhanney, and now in physical AI. Learned what works and what hasn’t, and been wrong enough times to have developed some solid judgement. As a venture partner at True North Fund, my focus is on Canada’s top-performing growth-stage companies. Through secondary investments, True North gives founders and employees flexible liquidity to keep building instead of exiting too early. I experienced the value personally at Ebates, when a timely secondary enabled a billion-dollar acquisition by Rakuten. The sectors have been varied — travel, e-commerce, marketplaces, physical AI, commercial real estate, and professional services — though the approach to building customer-led growth has been similar. I’m on the boards of McElhanney and Ocean Wise, and open to additional board opportunities in Western Canada — particularly where AI experience, M&A depth, and operational rigor would be useful. Fifteen years in and I'm still enjoying helping build Canada's tech ecosystem — as a founding C100 member, CDL mentor, fractional growth officer, board member, and venture partner at True North Fund. I invest as an LP and directly, including Apera, Arctic Wolf, Buda, Cambrian, Clay, Faire, Neo, PurposeMed, Sagetap, and Somo.